A Piece of Dixon history: Washington and Jefferson schools opened 70 years ago

On March 1, 1954, Dixon officially dedicated its new Washington and Jefferson grade schools, a project hailed as “the largest single school building program ever to be undertaken in Dixon.”

The Dixon school board began planning to build the two north-side schools in 1944, while World War II was raging in Europe and the Pacific. A special election in 1945 approved the purchase of land for two schools to replace Loveland School and North Central School, which were deemed outdated and too small for the growing district.

For several years, the board delayed the project, believing the construction costs to be prohibitive. But by 1951, a referendum revealed that more than 75% of voters wanted construction to begin on this complete overhaul of schooling for north-side grade schoolers.

Lindquist Construction of Dixon won the general construction contract for both schools, with total costs for Washington reaching $980,000 and $700,000 for Jefferson.

A new beginning

Although the cornerstones of both buildings are etched with “1952,” the schools actually opened in January 1954, in the middle of the school year. Ironically, Dixon’s first north-side school was built 100 years earlier, in 1854 at 417 Crawford, now Brinton Avenue.

Mollie Duffy, who had been principal at North Central School for 11 years, was appointed Washington’s new principal. Edith Scholl, principal at Loveland for 5 years, became principal at Jefferson. They stayed in those roles until Scholl (Marshall) resigned in 1965 and Duffy retired in 1967.

In 1954 all of Dixon’s elementary school principals were female, as were about 95% of the classroom teachers at Washington and Jefferson.

Before Washington and Jefferson

Before 1954, students in the northwest section (west of North Galena Avenue) went to Loveland School, a small three-story building built in 1913 atop a bluff on Martin Street. Northeast students went to North Central School, built in 1868 on the Brinton-Morgan-Ottawa-McKenney block, which has been occupied by Heritage Square since 1974.

When naming the two new schools, the district named them after presidents, a tradition that started with Lincoln School in 1937. Madison School (1958) and Reagan School (1996) continued that tradition.

Earlier schools such as E.C. Smith, Woodworth, Truman and Loveland were named after notable local citizens. In 2024, Dixon’s new Thomas J. Dempsey Therapeutic Day School at Nachusa returns to the previous naming convention.

‘Modern to the last detail’

The Telegraph said that Jefferson and Washington were “modern to the last detail.” Each school featured a band room, nurse’s room, library, homemaking classroom, manual arts classroom and a large gymnasium that included a full stage with curtains and stage lighting. The kindergarten rooms were heated by radiant heat from the floors and included a fireplace, washrooms and clothes closets.

The two buildings were intentionally decorated with light colors, blonde woodwork and large windows, much like Lincoln School. Decades later, about 70% of the windows would be bricked over to reduce energy costs.

The St. Anne’s connection

By the end of 1954, the old North Central School building was acquired by St. Anne’s Church, which was then located two blocks away on property bounded by North Dixon Avenue, East Morgan Street and North Dement Avenue.

St. Anne’s planned to build a new parochial school on the North Central site. But those plans eventually changed, as St. Anne’s built its new church and school about one-half mile farther north on Brinton in 1960. St. Anne’s School began classes there in 1964.

Out with the old

Next to North Central was North Dixon High School, built in 1900. But it closed in 1929 when the “castle” opened by the river, serving all north-side and south-side high school students.

A few years after 1954, all three schools, Loveland, North Central, and North Dixon High, were demolished, along with their treasured history. Notably, North Dixon High School was the building from which Ronald Reagan graduated in 1928.

When North Central School came down, Dixon lost a stunning lofty view of the city. In the 1800s, it was noted that North Central stood on an elevated spot “overlooking every portion of the city, the river, its islands, and rough romantic scenery, and the rolling prairie beyond.”

In the nick of time

Washington and Jefferson schools were built at the right time. As a result of the post-war Baby Boom (1946-1964), a flood of Dixon children was pouring into the schools by the mid-1950s.

For that first year, 500 kindergarten through eighth grade students streamed into Washington’s 18 classrooms, while about 210 attended Jefferson’s nine classrooms.

By 1958, enrollment at Washington had jumped 40% to 700, while attendance at Jefferson increased more than 50% to 334. Total enrollment in all Dixon public schools in 1955 reached 3,050, but by 1967 with the continued Baby Boom, enrollment exceeded 4,500. Today’s total enrollment is 2,512.

The reason for the bulging schools in the 1950s was certainly due to Dixon’s population increase. But another key factor was the closing of the area’s country schools.

Closing the country schools

In July 1956, about 20 country schoolhouses on the outskirts of Dixon closed and merged into the Dixon school district. These schools, each with about 10-20 students, included Bend, Brierton, Burket, Cook, Gap Grove, Garrison, Hazelwood, Hill, King, Lievan, Mound, Nachusa, Oak Forest, Preston, Riverside, Stoney Point, Sugar Grove, Walker, White Temple, Wildcat and Wolverine.

Busing then became a significant part of the school budget. In 1954, the school district had only one bus for 20 students. By 1957, the district operated 12 buses for almost 600 rural students.

More changes were on the way. With the opening of Madison School in 1958, Dixon finally had four elementary schools to serve the four quadrants of town: Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln.

A fifth school, the 1909 South Central School, continued to serve a variety of school needs until the Ronald Reagan Hometown Foundation bought it in 1988. The renovated building is now the Northwest Territory Historic Center, containing many treasured artifacts of local history.

• Dixon native Tom Wadsworth is a writer, speaker and occasional historian. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament.